For the month of September I’ll be the guest speaker/preacher on Sunday mornings at Cypress Bible Church. The five-week series is titled “A Faith That Can Change the World.” Here’s a brief summary of the first sermon:

Do You Trust Me?

What does it mean to have faith? More specifically, what does it mean to have faith in God?

Hebrews 11 is often referred to as the Hall of Faith. This chapter talks about some of the most faithful men and women to have ever walked the earth. What do their faiths have in common? And what do their faiths have in common with the Apostles and people like you and me? If we believe in one genuine faith, then what is the essence of that faith? What does it mean to have faith in God?

To answer this question we need to go back to the beginning, before the faith of Noah, before the faith of Abel. We need to go all the way back to the garden of Eden and look at the relationship that God established with Adam and Eve.

In the Genesis 2 creation story, God is described as the all-mighty Creator, and in forming a man out of the dust of the ground God is portrayed as the Giver of life. God is also portrayed as the Sustainer of life as He created the garden of Eden with its fruit-bearing trees that were good for food and a great river that watered the Ancient Near-Eastern world.

In the middle of the garden God planted two trees–the Tree of Life and the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. These trees at the center of the garden symbolize God’s central question to all of humankind: Do you trust me? God wants us to trust him, eat from the Tree of Life, and live forever; but if we choose not to trust God, if we choose to eat from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, God promises that we will die.

This question, “Do you trust me?” is the central question of faith. Every person has to make the choice between trusting God as the Giver and Sustainer of life or trusting themselves as the Giver and Sustainer of life. The people in the Hall of Faith–every one of them–was presented with this choice, and they all chose to trust God.

As Christians we also have a choice–we can either find life in Jesus or try to find life on our own. This faith is more than believing Jesus died for our sins so that we can go to heaven; it’s believing that Jesus is our source of life today, tomorrow, and forever more. Trusting Jesus as the Giver and Sustainer of life is the heart of the Christian faith and it’s the heartbeat of a faith that can change the world.

To listen to the sermon, click on the podcast link below.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Recent articles written about “Why Millennials are Leaving the Church” and “How to Keep Millennials in the Church” have left me wondering why nobody is interested in my opinion. Well, not necessarily my opinion, but the opinion of my generation—Generation X. We’re the ones born in the 60s and 70s, after the Boomers and before the Millennials. Granted, we’re not the largest generation, and we’re not that boisterous, but there are 80 million of us and we’re quietly reforming the church in America.

My intention here isn’t to whine or pout on behalf of Generation X. I’m not jumping up and down, shouting, “What about me? Pay attention to me!” I’m not demanding a seat at the table. I’m simply one Gen-Xer offering what I think is an overlooked perspective on the issue of Millennials leaving the church.

We’re Not Your Parents

First, I want to say something directly to Millennials. When you complain about evangelical Christians and the church being too political, too judgmental, and unconcerned about social justice, you’re not talking about Generation X. Gen Xers gave up on changing the world through politics long before you were old enough to vote and we’ve been leading the charge for social justice within the church for more than a decade. So the guys on television that claim to represent “evangelical Christians”—yeah, the guys you hate—they don’t represent us either.

So millennials, when you paint the church with broad, condemning strokes, be careful how wildly you wield your brush because you might not be as angry and frustrated with the church as you are with what your parents have done with the church.

Stop Selling Church

Second, I would like to explain why the question, “How do we keep Millennials in the church?” is counterproductive and why the question itself can cause a Millennial to storm off, muttering, “You don’t understand.” Millennials are the first “connected” generation, which means that they are the first generation born into a perpetual stream of media and advertising. As a result, they are able to filter information at a speed and in a fashion like no other generation before them; and therefore, they have the uncanny ability to smell a sales pitch miles away. So when Evans, in her CNN piece says, “Having been advertised to our whole lives, we millennials have highly sensitive BS meters, and we’re not easily impressed with consumerism or performances,” she’s making a profoundly important statement about how Millennials view the world. For Millennials, words are cheap and seeing is not believing. For Millennials, they have to experience it to believe it. And can you blame them? They were raised to never, ever, trust a stranger, and they grew up at a time when you couldn’t turn on the television without seeing a new update on the latest sex scandal in the church.

So Boomers, if you really want to keep Millennials in the church, then stop wrapping up Jesus like a Christmas present with a pretty bow and stop trying to sell church. Just love. Without an agenda, without an end goal in mind, just love people with reckless abandon, and who knows, you just might be surprised who shows up at your church next week.

Don’t Exchange One Product For Another

Finally, I would like to offer a word of warning to all us church-going Americans. Whether we like it or not, we’re consumers, and in the pursuit of experiencing genuine faith, we have to be careful not to merely exchange one product for another. As a culture we’ve been church hopping and shopping for decades, trying to find the church that fits us just right. But the truth is that the Church, in its purest sense, has never been about a building, a style of worship, or a liturgical form; the Church has always been about a community of Jesus-followers gathering together to worship God and serve one another.

So fellow Christians, I leave you with this: if or when you find the right church, don’t just sit there as though you’ve survived an exhausting pilgrimage across a desert and entered into the Promised Land. Because it does not matter what church you attend, if you’re not actively involved in being the church—loving God with all of your heart, mind, soul, and strength, and loving your neighbor as yourself—then, I promise you, your faith will run dry and before you know it, you’ll be on your way, searching for your favorite flavor of Kool-Aid within the newest church trend.

(Written by Dying to Control contributor, Mike Ballman)

Here’s what happened on the previous episode of Awkward Moments in Premarital Counseling:

I was sitting with a couple in my office, discussing their relationship and their desire to get married. After I explained what I believe it means to be married, I looked at them in silence until I saw the light go on with one of them. At that point I asked, “Do you see what I’m getting at here?”

Then, in season-finale fashion, the episode ended with this surprising exchange:

“Are you saying we are already married?”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

In this week’s episode…

Congratulations, You’re Already Married

Did you see what I did there? I simply helped my counselees see that the marriage ceremony, the legal pronouncement of marriage, is not what makes one married in God’s eyes. Rather, it is the three-part act of marrying another – leaving, cleaving and becoming one flesh – that constitutes marriage.

The religious and/or legal ceremony is intended to be a public pronouncement of the couple’s desire to seek God’s blessing and guidance as they enter into the act of marriage.  Unfortunately, most couples put the proverbial cart before the horse and fully enter into the act of marrying long before they ask for and seek God’s blessing and guidance.

Since the couple is already engaged in a marital relationship by having left their parents, cleaved to one another, and become one flesh, the traditional premarital mandate – stop having sex until after the wedding ceremony – does not fully address the primary issue at hand.  The primary issue is that the couple in my office is asking me to plan a ceremony to invoke God’s blessing on their marriage when they have already slighted God by fully entering into the act of marriage without his blessing or guidance.  Therefore, it is my job to help them recognize God as the Giver and Sustainer of their marriage rather than as a ceremonial afterthought.

Consequently, much of my “premarital counseling” actually turns out to be marital counseling with a focus on strengthening the marriage that already exists rather than preparing for a future marriage.

Almost invariably at this point in the conversation I see a sense of relief pour over the faces of the couple as if I were a professor canceling a final exam the week of finals.  You see, I think most, if not all, couples know deep down before they ever step into my office that they are already married and that they have left God out of the union — they just need someone to give them permission to acknowledge the trespass and the safety to come clean with God.  As my good friend and co-contributor to Dying to Control, Leon, would say it, “they know they are hiding from God and they need someone to help them come out from hiding and face him.”  After all it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to recognize that if they are already living together, sharing their money and possessions and having sex — the marriage ceremony will be like singing the national anthem after the super bowl.

Now, to the traditionalist Christian still bothered that I would condone sex before the legal ceremony, let me ask you: what if I’m correct? What if marriage isn’t defined by the words, “I do,” but rather, by what has already been done? What if the couple sitting in my office is already married in the eyes of God? What am I supposed to do with this biblical mandate:

^4 “The wife’s body does not belong only to her. It also belongs to her husband. In the same way, the husband’s body does not belong only to him. It also belongs to his wife. ⁵ You shouldn’t stop giving yourselves to each other except when you both agree to do so. And that should be only to give yourselves time to pray for a while. Then you should come together again. In that way, Satan will not tempt you when you can’t control yourselves.”  I Cor. 7

For those unwed couples I counsel that I think have fully entered into marriage before the ceremony, I’m not going to tell them to separate until the wedding day, and I’m not going to tell them to stop having sex — I am not going to divide what has already been joined together. What I am going to do is explain the essence of marriage and the implications of this passage and leave the decision to them.

(Written by Dying to Control contributor, Mike Ballman)

“I will take Awkward Moments in Premarital Counseling for $500, Alex.”

“The answer is ‘I presume you two are already having sex.”

“That’s easy, Alex, the answer is ‘What is the big fat elephant in the room no one wants to address in the first session of premarital counseling.”

“Correct!”

Throughout my fifteen years of premarital counseling, numbering well over 50 couples, only a fraction of the couples have answered “no” to the question, “Are you two having sex?”  That doesn’t seem that unusual in this day and age unless you consider that the large majority of my counselees grew up in the church and would enthusiastically label themselves evangelicals.  That is significant because a huge tenet of evangelicalism is sexual purity, which includes a strict prohibition of any form of premarital sex. Moreover, the majority of my experience is with the generation that was deluged by such classic sexual purity manifestos as I Kissed Dating Goodbye, Boy Meets Girl and my favorite— I Gave My Word to Stop at Third.  Actually, I am not sure that last one is a real book or something my youth pastor used to say.  Clearly, there is no shortage on teaching or ambiguity about the evangelical message that premarital sex is a no-no.  So why is no one taking this foundational teaching seriously?

I think, to most of my counselees, abstinence is some kind of deep magic that is only for the truly hardcore Christian.  It is a great ideal but no one is really expected to be able to do it—kind of like giving away all your possessions to the poor.

So what does a good evangelical pastor like myself do with this disparity?  The most preferable option for me and my counselees is to ignore the elephant.  However, I could risk losing my evangelical membership card for that one—so that is a not an option.

The textbook answer is to tell the couple that while it is true that the deep magic of abstinence is only possible for a few, all are held to its standard.  But not to fear, atonement is cheap.  If you agree to feel really badly about disappointing me and Jesus and agree to abstain from any further sexual activity until the wedding, all will be forgiven.  While that option is the best for ensuring that all parties keep their evangelical membership in good standing, it seems kind of hollow to me.

The option that I have found most fulfilling with experience and Scripture goes something like this:  why don’t we take a look at how God describes what constitutes marriage in Genesis Chapter 2? ^“ … a man will leave his father and mother and be joined to his wife. The two of them will become one.”

I go on  to explain that I believe that the act of marrying another consists of three parts:

1. Leaving your home of origin.
2. Joining all that you have with another. (living together,  joining finances, sharing future plans, dreams)
3. The giving of self, all that you are, in sexual intimacy to another.

I then sit and look at the couple in silence as they think through what I have just shared.  Once I see the light go on with one or both of them, I say something like, “do you see what I am getting at here?”

“Are you saying we are already married?”

“Yes, yes, I am.”

If you’ve ever heard me teach, you know—sooner or later—I’m going to talk about the story of Adam and Eve. It’s not because I’m obsessed with the story (although I admit that I am); it’s because the account has served as the backbone for much of Western thought and culture, including the subjects of sex and marriage.

In the account of Adam and Eve, we are told, “…a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). This brief statement has served as the model for marriage in the Western world, outlining the union between a man and a woman in a sacred, three-step process.

Leave

The first step in marriage is for a man “to leave” his father and mother, meaning that the man is to exit the protective care of his parents; he is to step out on his own and establish his independence. This leaving is not a severing of the parent-child relationship, but a recognition that the man is no longer under his parent’s authority. Leaving one’s parents is an essential step in getting married, and if you’ve ever watched an episode of Everybody Loves Raymond, you’ve seen the conflict and chaos that inevitably occurs when a man refuses “to leave” his mother and father.

Cleave

The second step in marriage is for a man “to cleave” to his wife. The verb that’s used here can be translated as “unite,” “bond,” “cling,” or “cleave,” and conveys the idea of two separate entities being joined together. In the context of Genesis 2, a man is supposed to form a permanent connection to his wife to replace the bond that he previously shared with his parents. This union of a man and a woman is typically recognized and celebrated by the couple’s family and friends through a formal, public ceremony—a wedding—in which the couple makes a lifelong commitment to one another.

Two Become One Flesh

The final step in marriage is for the two to become one flesh, which traditionally occurs on the couple’s wedding night as they consummate their marriage by having intercourse for the first time. Yes, “they will become one flesh” is a euphemism for sex. Now I understand that it’s in vogue these days to say that the two becoming one flesh reflects a oneness more mysterious and wonderful than sex alone, and I realize that such a mystical teaching makes for a transcendent-sounding sermon, but it’s a weak interpretation of the expression that cheapens both sex and marriage.

If you search the Bible to see how this expression is used, you’ll discover that it’s always mentioned in the context of marriage, except in one instance. 1 Corinthians 6:16 states “Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” Call me crazy, but I’m pretty sure that when a man unites himself with a prostitute it means that they had sex. And I don’t think prostitution is the oldest profession because men have an insatiable desire for emotional and spiritual oneness.

The idea of “two becoming one flesh” is a vivid and dramatic image of intercourse. And by saying that it’s more than sex or something other than sex, misses the meaning and purpose of sex. Sex is not merely a physical act for personal gratification. Sex is a holistic experience that engages our mind, body, soul, and spirit, and it’s the ultimate expression of intimacy between a man and a woman, making the two one flesh. That’s why sex between two people forms a lasting bond between them whether they know it or not, whether they want it or not. Sex is never just sex.

So what do we do? As I mentioned in a previous post, in today’s world most adults are having sex, most couples are engaging in intercourse before marriage, and most individuals lose their virginity long before their wedding day. What is a girl supposed to do when her boyfriend dumps her after they have sex for the first time? What is a man supposed to do when he feels guilty for becoming one flesh with more women than he can remember? And what should a pastor say to a couple in pre-marital counseling that has been sexually active for most of their relationship?

Now that we have defined sex and marriage from a biblical perspective, these are some of the real-life situations we will address in the weeks to come.

In last week’s post—Can the Church Still Be Relevant—I wrote about how the Church needs to contextualize the Christian faith in 21^st century terms if it wants to stay relevant. This week, I want to begin fleshing out what that might look like through a series of posts titled, Sex, Marriage, and the Church.

Sex is a popular subject these days. Television shows like Sex in the City and movies like Pleasantville have brought sex out of the dark and into the light of mainstream culture. What was once a utilitarian act performed for the sake of begetting children is now a recreational activity for everyone (over the age of 18) to discuss, explore, and enjoy. In response to this sexual revolution what is the Church supposed to say? What is the Church supposed to do?

Here’s what the Church is saying: “Don’t have sex outside of marriage, and if you are having sex outside of marriage, stop it.” And here’s what the Church is doing: nothing. The Church’s commentary on sex hasn’t changed or progressed in 2,000 years, and in what appears to be a losing battle, the church is doing less and less to address this epidemic. It’s remarkable to think that instead of engaging one of the most important social and moral issues of our time, the Church occasionally whispers, “You shouldn’t do that,” and has turned a blind eye to sexual promiscuity, except, of course, in the case of homosexual relations.

So what is the Church supposed to do? Should the Church take a stronger position on abstinence and discipline those having sex outside of marriage? Should the Church go in the opposite direction and somehow try to reconcile traditional beliefs with the values of our current culture? Or should the Church mind its own business by continuing its current “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy.

As I mentioned last week, being relevant is not about defending your theology or changing your doctrine; being relevant is about explaining your beliefs in a way that connects with people and the world in which they live. In today’s world, most adults are having sex, most couples engage in intercourse before marriage, and most individuals lose their virginity long before their wedding day. For a priest or a pastor to stand in front of a congregation and say, “Don’t have sex,” is like a principal telling a group of children in detention, “Don’t get in trouble.” It’s too late, it’s already happened. At that point, what people need is a relevant message to help them deal with what’s already been done.

On the issue of sex, the Church doesn’t need to change its position, but it better have more to say about sex outside of marriage than, “Stop it.” The Church needs to reclaim sex—it needs to educate people about how this most intimate of acts transcends physical gratification—and the Church needs to explain how every sexual encounter binds two people together forever. You see, being relevant is about meeting people where they are, in the world in which they live, with a message that has real-life implications. The Church needs to be talking about sex in a relevant way, which is what I’m trying to do in this series on sex, marriage, and the Church.

Join me next time as we look at sex in how it’s evolved From Procreation to Recreation.